Senior Electrical / Electro-Optic Engineer

Company Overview

Photon Queue builds the world's leading quantum memory devices – systems that store and release single photons. Using a unique free-space storage architecture that achieves kilometer-scale optical path lengths in a compact form factor, we sidestep the fundamental limitations of every competing approach and deliver storage fidelity and efficiency levels that no other technology can match in a device that can actually be deployed and integrated into real quantum systems.

We're solving a critical infrastructure problem for the quantum ecosystem: without a reliable way to synchronize photons across a quantum network or photonic processor, the promise of quantum computing, sensing, and communications stalls. Photon Queue is the synchronization layer that makes progress possible. Our systems are already in use at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Maryland, and demand is growing fast.

Life at Photon Queue

We're an early-stage, fast-growing team of physicists and engineers turning two decades of laboratory research into the best commercial quantum memory platform. With strong institutional backing and commercial traction at leading national labs, we're at an exciting breakout moment – the kind where the work you do today directly shapes the trajectory of the company tomorrow.

There's no corporate bureaucracy here, just sharp people working on hard problems, with direct ownership over what they build and clear visibility into its impact. Every person on the team shapes the product and the company. If you thrive in an environment where your work matters from day one and where espresso, rigor, and curiosity are the culture, you'll fit right in.

About the New Mexico Branch

This role is one of the two founding hires for Photon Queue's new Albuquerque branch, established with the support of a New Mexico Quantum Technologies Award and located at Roadrunner Quantum Labs. The New Mexico team owns the engineering that sits between our core research and our shipping product: systematic component qualification, vendor development, and integration engineering that makes our devices more efficient, more reliable, and easier to manufacture.

It is a small, high-autonomy team with a defined charter and real budget behind it. You will be one of two engineers standing up the lab, choosing the vendors, building the stations, and setting the technical direction with the full support of the Chicago engineering team. We will expand the New Mexico branch as we expand our product development capabilities and increase sales.

Role Summary

The Senior Electrical / Electro-Optic Engineer owns the electronic systems program for Photon Queue's New Mexico branch. You will design the sensing, control, and feedback electronics that keep our optical systems performing at their best in the field, and own that work from schematic through PCB spins, bring-up, and extended-duration characterization on prototype hardware. As the branch grows, this role becomes the anchor for our broader electronics and controls roadmap.

Location: On-site, Albuquerque, NM (Roadrunner Quantum Labs)

Candidates must have current US work authorization - we are unable to sponsor visas at this time.

We are an in-office company, and our expectation is that employees primarily work from their Photon Queue office 5 days a week. However, we also recognize the importance of flexibility and trust our employees to manage their schedules responsibly. This may include occasional remote work, starting the day with morning meetings from home before heading to the office, or leaving earlier when needed to accommodate family commitments.

Responsibilities

Closed-Loop Control & Automation

• Design and implement closed-loop feedback control for precision optical systems, integrating sensors, actuators, and custom electronics
• Develop the control logic and tuning strategy – loop architecture, gains, search algorithms, drift detection, and safe recovery behavior

Electronics Design & Bring-Up

• Own custom PCB design end to end, including schematic capture, layout, fabrication and assembly vendor management, bring-up, and debug, across an iterative sequence of prototype, revised, and pre-production boards
• Integrate active feedback electronics into a compact, device-compatible form factor
• Design for noise, grounding, EMI, thermal drift, connectorization, and serviceability at a customer site
• Write the embedded and host-side software needed to configure, run, log, and diagnose the control system

Prototype System Integration

• Build and maintain prototype optical systems as the development platform for controls work
• Collect, analyze, and report data from prototypes operating under environmental cycling

Characterization, Documentation & Handoff

• Quantify system stability and performance, with the measurement rigor to make results defensible
• Produce schematics, layouts, BOMs, test plans, and results write-ups that support production handoff and quarterly grant milestone reporting
• Partner with the Chicago engineering team to transition validated designs into shipping product, and support field debug of deployed systems

Minimum qualifications

• B.S. or higher in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Physics, or a related field, plus 5+ years designing electronics for precision instrumentation; an M.S. or Ph.D. may count toward the experience
• Demonstrated experience taking a custom PCB from schematic through layout, fabrication, bring-up, and debug
• Hands-on experience with closed-loop control systems, including practical loop tuning and stability analysis on real hardware
• Experience with low-noise analog design and precision sensor readout (e.g., photodiodes, position-sensitive detectors)
• Proficiency in Python or C/C++ for instrument control, data acquisition, and analysis
• Comfort working hands-on in an optics lab – aligning beams, coupling into fiber, and using optical power meters and standard lab instrumentation
• Strong written and verbal communication skills – comfort presenting at design reviews and writing up results for a technical audience

Preferred qualifications

• FPGA development experience (VHDL or Verilog), particularly for timing and control applications
• High-voltage or fast-switching driver design (e.g., electro-optic modulator drivers)
• Embedded firmware experience on microcontrollers or SoCs
• Experience designing electronics that ship inside a product and get serviced in the field
• Comfortable or excited to be one of the first two people in a new office

We encourage you to apply even if you don't meet all of the qualifications stated above. We're looking for the right candidate with the aptitude and drive to learn and grow with us. That may just be you!

Compensation: $110k - $150k

Equity: 0.2% - 0.4%

Relocation: up to $15k gross for candidates relocating to New Mexico

Health Insurance:

• Medical – 100% covered for Employee, 80% covered for dependents
• Dental, Vision and Life – 100% covered for Employee and dependents

Additional benefits/perks:

• Flexible time-off
• 401(k) in the near future

Parental leave:

• 6 weeks of paid Parental Bonding Leave for mothers and fathers of new children welcomed into their family (birthed or adopted).
• For birthing mothers, an additional 6 weeks of paid Medical Recovery Leave to build back your health and strength before returning to solving the problems of storing photons.